Category: Community College

With Academy Award season upon us, ESL teachers may wish to think about how they can use movies in the classroom. Movies provide a wonderful source of language input for students. They can provide valuable exposure to language and also to culture, as well as being an excellent source of new vocabulary along with slang and idioms. They can be used to help students work on many language skills including listening, reading, speaking, and pronunciation.

Film selection criteria

Some teachers choose to use short excerpts from movies. If you have a class in which you meet with students for several hours a week, you may be able to use entire films with them. There are several criteria to consider when selecting films for use with students. First off, consider the level of interest and relevance for your students. A group of 18-year-old students in an intensive English program may have different interests in movie than a group of fifth graders or a class of adult immigrants and refugees. Be sure that the actors in the film speak relatively clearly, and that the storyline is not too difficult to follow. Analyze the language to ensure that it isn’t too difficult. Consider the content of the film to make sure that it’s appropriate for your students in terms of the language and themes involved. If you wish to use an entire film, check on the availability of a written script, which can be extremely helpful.

Practical considerations

Carefully preview the film in advance, so that you are aware of potentially difficult language or challenging themes for your students. Also check your equipment to make sure that everyone in the room can see the screen clearly and that the sound quality is adequate. If you want to find a particular section in the film, note the time on a counter so that you can access the right spot easily.

Classroom activities

Most films these days are available with closed captions that you can turn on or off. You can choose whether or not to turn on the captions. After viewing the film or an excerpt from the film, you can select comprehension questions or discussion questions to use with your students. You may also wish to pull out various bits of vocabulary, slang, idioms, or new expressions.

If you obtain a complete script of the movie for your students, you can assign them to read it either for homework or in class. You can ask them to act out scenes from the movie, or give them writing assignments based on the film.

For speaking practice, choose a scene from the film that contains a lot of activity. Put students in pairs with one facing the screen and the other with their back to the screen. Turn down the sound, then play the excerpt. Ask the student facing the screen to describe what’s happening to the student who can’t see. Then have the two partners change positions.

To really give your students a reading workout. Choose a film in a language other than English that has English subtitles!

General Discussion Questions about Movies

Here are some questions you can use with your students for a general discussion about movies.

Generally speaking, what kind of films do you like? Comedy? Drama? Romance? Other?

Often, at the end of the year, American film critics like to put together a “top ten list” of the ten best films of the year. If you were going to put together a top ten list for yourself, what movies would be on that list? Give reasons for your selections.

Who is your favorite actor? Why do you like him or her?

What qualities should a good actor have?

Many people believe that the American (Hollywood) film industry has too much influence on the way that people think about the United States, about men and women, and about fantasy and reality. Do you feel that Hollywood has a distorted image of the U.S.?

Some people think that studying film is not very helpful for learning English, it is only entertainment. What is your opinion? Has studying film been helpful for your English ability? How could it be more helpful?

Sample Post-Viewing Discussion Questions for a Movie

What is the meaning of the title of the film?

How would you describe the mood, feeling, and story of this film to someone who was not familiar with it and who had never seen it before?

What was your favorite moment in the film?

What was your least favorite moment in the film?

Who is your favorite character in the film?

What part did you think was the funniest?

What part did you think was the most special for you?

List three new vocabulary words or expressions that you learned from this movie.

Instructions for Students to Practice Acting out a Scene from a Movie

With 1-3 other students, choose a scene from one of the films that we have watched to act out in front of the class.

The scene that you select should be an important one in the movie (not something trivial).

The scene, when enacted, should last about two minutes (or less), so choose your scene carefully.

It is not necessary to memorize your lines or to bring or use props or costumes, though you may do this if you wish.

Do not improvise new dialog for the scene. Use only the written dialog from the film.

When acting out the scene, use the same actions as the characters in the movies. Do not read directly from the script. Remember, you are supposed to be speaking, not reading.

Try to use the correct pronunciation. Be as fluent and as accurate as you can.

Speak loudly and clearly so as to be heard by everyone.

Movie Vocabulary Homework Assignment

For the next class meeting make a list of vocabulary words which are new to you from our film script. Your assignment is to find words and expressions from p. ______ to p. ________Your list should include at least ___________ words and expressions.

Using a dictionary and consulting others, find an accurate definition or meaning of the word or expression.

On your list include:

the page number in the script where it is found

the word or expression

whether the word or expression is commonly used or not

whether the word or expression is polite to use or not

the meaning

Example:

Page

Expression

Common?

Polite?

Meaning

17

Put his foot in his mouth

somewhat

OK

Say something embarrassing or foolish

You may work together with others who are working on the same pages.

Make enough copies of your worksheet to class for everyone in the class.

Sample Vocabulary from the film When Harry Met Sally

Here are some vocabulary terms and expressions from When Harry Met Sally that you could assign students to learn:

time to kill; to fix someone up with someone; there is no point (in doing something); to come down with something ; affront; to hit it off with someone; to bump into someone; I couldn’t agree more

Successful Films

A couple of films that I have used successfully in the classroom with students in an intensive English program include The Princess Bride and When Harry Met Sally. What are some films that you have used successfully in the classroom? What activities did you use with them?

Joe McVeigh is a teacher, teacher trainer, and independent educational consultant based in Middlebury, Vermont. He has worked in a variety of countries and has taught at Cal State LA, Caltech, USC, Middlebury College, the Bread Loaf School of English, and Saint Michael’s College. He is an active member of the TESOL International Association and has worked as an English language specialist for the U.S. Department of State. He is co-author of Tips for Teaching Culture from Pearson along with other books for students of English. In addition to talks and workshops at professional conferences, Joe contributes to the field through his website, which contains videos, resources, and presentation slides and handouts at www.joemcveigh.org.

The best gift I ever received was three large boxes of books. My much-older cousin, Donald, was a doctoral student in oceanography and was due to spend the better part of a year far from our homes in Vancouver, Canada, sailing in the Russian arctic. Before he left, he piled about 300 paperback science-fiction novels and short-story collections into boxes and deposited them at my feet with the words, “I think you will enjoy these.”

I was 12, it was the first day of summer vacation, and I was hooked. Over the next lazy months and into the fall, I read obsessively.

I finished them all.

The consequences, I realize now, were profound. My reading speed and vocabulary certainly increased. My imagination was sparked, as was my critical thinking: “How could that alien dinosaur find anything to eat on that dusty moon?!” But one small casualty of the epic reading binge was my pronunciation.

When any language learner acquires vocabulary, there can be mismatches between hearing and comprehension. This is extremely common when we mishear song lyrics, such as the lines of the Bob Dylan song: “The answer my friend, is blowin’ in the wind.” which some have misheard as “The ants are my friends, blowin’ in the wind.”

This type of error points to the mental mechanisms our brains try to employ to make sense of what we hear, approximating new strings of sounds like a smartphone app to find the closest pronunciation that provides meaning. However, in my case, my error was typical of those who learn new vocabulary through reading. For some reason, I had read the word robot over and over, mentally pronouncing it as row-but (IPA / roʊ bʌt /) rather than the standard (for my local Canadian dialect) robot, row-bought (IPA / roʊ bɑt /). Through my adolescence, no one corrected me or, if they did, I paid them no mind.

The blame is not exclusively mine. In large part, it has to do with the irrational nature of English pronunciation. Variations occur to such an extent that it’s questionable whether or not we should teach many of them. In 1922, a Dutch writer by the name of G. Nolst Trenité compiled about 800 challenging words into one poem that he called The Chaos. Most native English speakers have difficulty getting through the poem without making a dozen or more errors. Try it yourself, reading the following 13 lines aloud at a brisk pace (the full poem is further below):

Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.
Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it’s written.)

Even with the assistance of the rhyming portions, pronouncing the poem correctly is still a challenge and surprisingly typical of the pronunciation hurdles that learners need to leap over to communicate successfully.

How can teachers help? It begins with understanding the complex nature of pronunciation.

First, as seen with the Bob Dylan example, the brain has to understand what is being heard and match the sounds to meaningful words. Part of this is deciding what is significant in pronunciation. For example, some Asian languages have a different perception of the significance of r and l when they listen and speak. Other languages, and even other English dialects, feature other differences. In addition, native English speakers routinely drop sounds at the start, middle, or end of words, often blending them together or changing sounds so that a simple question like What’s up? becomes Wassup?

Once the sound is understood, there are a variety of physiological issues that go into pronunciation. These include processes that occur in the throat with the control of air, with shaping the mouth, and through arranging the tongue and lips. For students whose languages do not include the same consonant and vowel sounds, there is a learning curve to control the organs of speech. There are additionally cultural issues, such as a reluctance to show the tongue during the pronunciation of l sounds.

Here are five tips to help learners.

1. Separate pronunciation from other lessons. Too often, teachers will correct grammar, usage, and pronunciation together, leading to criticisms like, “That’s the wrong word, and not the right part of speech, and you’re saying it wrong.” Make pronunciation its own lesson.

2. Listen to decide when a student’s errors are simple one-time mistakes or more systematic pronunciation errors that need to be remediated. Let simple mistakes slide so you can focus on the more important errors.

3. Consider when to use implicit and explicit correction. Implicit correction involves repeating what the student has said, but with the correct pronunciation. Explicit involves explaining why the pronunciation is wrong.

4. Use visual aids to make the learning memorable. These might include a chart of a cutaway view of the mouth, tongue, and teeth to show where pronunciation occurs. A colleague used to bring his son’s toy hammer and toy pliers to the classroom. He used the hammer to beat out the rhythm and intonation of sentences on the desks and threatened to use the pliers to pull out students’ tongues when they failed to pronounce l sounds effectively.

5. Instead of always focusing on what is wrong, take time to praise the weakest students when they pronounce something correctly. This shifts students from thinking that they have poor pronunciation to the idea that they have problems pronouncing some words and, with practice, can improve.

I’m an example! After several decades, I’ve learned to pronounce robot!

Tasks for Teachers

1. Ask students to choose a short piece of writing that interests them and that is appropriate to their age and level. Have them record it, checking their pronunciation, and rerecording it until they are satisfied that it is their best effort. Ask them to check it with peers before sharing it with you or the class.

2. Ask students to find a recorded piece of dialogue, such as a speech, and record themselves reading it. Ask them to compare their pronunciation to that of the recording in the same way. Ask them to check with peers.

Tasks for Learners

1. Read the poem TheChaos by G. Nolst Trenité in a group. Help each other by first underlining the words you already know and know how to pronounce, and then teach them to others in the group. Some words, like Melpomene and Terpsichore (goddesses of tragedy and dance, respectively) are uncommon, but you can look up the pronunciation anyway.

Dr. Ken Beatty, teacher trainer, writer, and TESOL Professor, has promoted best teaching and learning practices from primary through university levels in 300+ sessions in 31 countries. Ken is author of 130+ textbooks, including books in the Pearson series Learning English for Academic Purposes (LEAP).

One challenge facing instructors in second language programs today is providing a course that will be challenging and rigorous enough to ensure that students are prepared quickly and appropriately for their content classes at English-speaking universities. Perhaps students will only have one session in an EAP course to work on improving reading and writing to keep up with content for their degrees. Or maybe students need to take two or three classes to achieve an appropriate level of English language mastery to even be admitted into a university. Regardless, the role of the English language teacher in this environment is critical to a learner’s success in a degree program. The most effective teachers will be prepared to provide content that is appropriate and authentic to get learners on the college track and prepare them to meet and exceed expectations in their content programs.

Teachers can only provide such content when there is a clear understanding of what learners need to learn at this level. Students at this level often demonstrate a high degree of oral proficiency and can maintain and extend discourse with native speakers fairly fluently, so teachers often feel that they are already advanced enough to succeed in an L1 setting.

Despite this high degree of proficiency in speaking, these students struggle with reading and writing, especially lengthy, textbook chapter-length readings and writing assignments beyond the five-paragraph essay. The challenges may look similar enough to what teachers already recognize as problems for L2 learners; in other words, it is tempting to say the learners are all high-intermediate or even advanced and design a program accordingly. To do this, though, ignores the difference in proficiency between learners at these more advanced levels and fails to take students to the level they need to successfully survive in an L1 setting where they interact with L1 speakers rather than as part of a classroom where everyone is an L2 learner. In order to develop the ideal program, it helps to first define the differences between our highly skilled learners. Continue reading →

“Now, remember, don’t tip your hat to another witch unless she tips hers first—you’re still an apprentice. And if you should come across some fellweed, be sure to pick it, but only if it’s the four-leaf variety. The five-leaf kind will rot your fingers.”

“Yes, Grandma.”

Mason made a mental note not to touch anything with five leaves.

Cowel made a mental note not to touch anything. (Anderson, 2007)

I can’t remember the book in which I first read the term mental note, but I remember the author used it excessively. My 12-year-old self was following the adventures of some junior adventurer who used these mental notes as a cheap plot device to foreshadow further adventures and drum up anticipation. But I found the idea enchanting: my own brain could hide a secret vault brimming with my wild ideas.

Now, like all adults, I find my secret mental vault over-stuffed and increasingly less secure with short-term memories more susceptible to decay, and my ability to retrieve mental notes is sometimes akin to reading words written in smoke. To compensate, I make lists, sometimes on paper and sometimes on my laptop. I flirt with phone apps that promise to organize my notes for me, but generally find them unwieldy. Continue reading →

How can we teach students to begin mastering the art of pronunciation autonomously? There is a very helpful tool that can be utilized in classrooms, one we may not be familiar with or may not have thought of using: the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). This resource is especially useful when helping students with consonants.

Here is what the IPA gives us to help us distinguish consonant sound formation. At first look you may ask, as I did, what does all this mean and how can this help me? One good reason to understand the IPA is that many dictionaries use the IPA symbols. So let’s take a minute to understand how to interpret this chart. First, see how it’s organized.

(Wondering what pulmonic means? Of course you are, you teach English. The Wikipedia definition is: A pulmonic consonant is a consonant produced by air pressure from the lungs, as opposed to ejective, implosive, and click consonants.)

Most languages have only pulmonic consonants.

The IPA helps us with three important areas: place of articulation,manner of articulation,and voicing.

The basics are: In order to make sounds, we need to manipulate the structure of our mouth, tongue, teeth, and throat. We produce different sounds by manipulating our mouth, tongue, teeth, and throat to various places to induce some type of obstruction in the airflow. The various obstructions help produce the various sounds.

Place of articulation has two categories: Active and Passive Articulators. These are listed on the chart as Bilabial, Labiodental, Dental, Alveolar, Postalveolar, Retroflex, Palatal, Velar, Uvular, Pharyngeal, and Glottal Consonants. These various airflow obstructions are all listed at the top of the IPA chart. Thank goodness not all of these are needed in the English language! But, we should be aware that these do exist in other languages, some of which may be the native languages of our English language learners.

Next is manner of articulation, which is listed on the left-hand side of the chart.This tells us how much airflow is being obstructed. Near total obstruction is listed at the top and a minimal amount near the bottom.

Let’s start with the second from the top, nasal, because many of us have used exaggerated examples of nasal. If we say the word nasal, we are diverting the air totally from the throat directly through the nose to produce the “n” sound. Nice! Now try “m.” You’ll notice that some of the air flows into the closed mouth before exiting through the nose. The tongue, lips, and teeth are positioned differently: meditate, moving, muscles.

Now let’s try plosives. Plosives stop the airflow altogether and allow pressure to build up and then be released in an “explosive” manner. English has six plosive consonants: p, b, t, d, k, and g.

Finally, we have voicing. Voicing is the differentiation between similarities of place and manner. For example, let’s take the consonants p and b. We produce both consonants using the same place and manner structures. However, p and b are differentiated by the production of a non-vibrated p and a slightly vibrated b. Try it. Say both consonants and feel the difference in your throat. In class, have your students try the same exercise. Continue reading →